historia wrote: ↑Sat Jan 20, 2024 9:52 am
TRANSPONDER wrote: ↑Tue Jan 09, 2024 10:55 pm
I know the 'end of Mark was lost' excuse was popular, but it makes no sense. If anything was lost, it would be the start - not the middle of the scroll or the end of the book which would be less handled or open to damage.
The regular scribal practice of writing
subscriptiones in scrolls suggests the opposite, actually.
Consider F. G. Kenyon, "Papyrus rolls and the ending of St Mark,"
The Journal of Theological Studies vol. 40 iss. 157 (1939), pp. 56-57:
Kenyon wrote:
It has always been assumed that the reader, when he had finished a roll, rolled it back again before he replaced it on its shelf, so that the beginning was on the outside.
Human nature being what it is, it seems to me more probable that he replaced it as it was, with the end on the outside, and left it to the next person who wanted to read it to roll it back to the beginning.
This seems common sense, and it is confirmed by the habit of placing the title at the end of the roll and not at the beginning. The reader of a roll would not want to wait till he had read to the end in order to know the name of the author and the title of the work; and an intending reader would not want to unroll the entire roll in order to ascertain these facts. No doubt if the roll was provided with a σίλλνβος, it would not matter whether it had a title at the end or at the beginning of the roll itself; but those little labels would be liable to be detached from their rolls, and it was an obvious precaution to inscribe the title on the roll itself, at whichever end was most serviceable.
Therefore, since the title was habitually written at the end, this seems to be evidence that the roll was normally left with its end outside.
There are, on the whole, good reasons to believe Mark's gospel originally ended at 16:8. But an original ending being lost because the
autograph or a very early copy was damaged is not implausible.
That's a good suggestion. Of course if back on the shelf with the end on the outside it might get damaged with people sorting through the scrolls. However accepting that, IF Mark had an ending, now lost (and the women runing away and saying nothing to anyone does sound like the end of it), consider John who has no angelic explanation, which suggests there never was one, and that was invented to clear up any doubts about what the empty tomb meant. If so, one might argue that the actual lost ending was Mary (and the implied other) ran back and says 'we don't know where they have laid him'. Thus the original ending was an empty tomb and no explanation.
The appearance afterwards is Johannine with the angels making no sense and explaining nothing and the theological stuff about ascending to the father, which I recall one of his earlier semons, not found in the synoptics. So I'd say any missing end would be like that - an empty tomb, the women running to the disciples with no clue what happened to Jesus.
This still leaves the resurrection - appearances account invented, including by John. I might also refer to some doubts I have even about the tomb. John has no reason why they went there, while Matthew says they just went to look and Luke has a dubious tale of the women obtaining, pounding and mixing spices on the sabbath. Mark suggests the women had bought spices after the Sabbath which I suppose is possible when it was evening and the shops would be closing. But Luke (if reflecting an original has that done last thing on the Friday. John (if reflecting the original, has no such reason, but of course his version has spices dumped in the tomb already. But it's already getting complicated, so I'll leave it just with the idea that the contradictions seem to refer to the reason (if any) to go to the tomb, which, I suggests, hints at story -invention. The women had to go there to see the tomb was empty.
I won't even get onto the possibility that the ending was removed because Christianity didn't like it, but th fact is, the accounts contradict. If Mark had a longer ending, why wouldn't the others use it? Was it lost before they wrote their gospels?
Then there is "Luke/Matthew", which show signs of direct borrowing/copying from one-another. Then comes "John", which adds even more 'supernatural-ness' to the storyline.
